Welcome to English

The English Department at Ash Green School constantly strives to make lessons stimulating and enjoyable, encouraging students to make choices about the ways they learn and setting realistic yet challenging targets for themselves.

At Key Stage 3 students cover a range of topics including First World War poetry, twentieth century drama, pre-1914 fiction, media and Shakespeare.

In preparation for the SATS examinations the department uses collective learning: this is a teaching style that brings classes together enabling English experts to teach students key ideas, issue and skills in a public forum, making use of a range of ICT opportunities and teaching and learning styles that are not quite so readily available in a typical classroom situation.

Similar techniques are used in Key Stage 4, where trigger lessons are used to teach students the central themes, structure and language devices of short stories in preparation for their English Literature exam.

English literature also requires the students to study a selection of poems by Seamus Heaney and Gillian Clarke, and several poems written before 1914.

In English language students study a range of poems from different cultures.

To support students development as independent readers we recommend that you visit these pages which contain reading strategies for all abilities from Level 3 KS3 to B+ KS4.